


Weaving Spiders Come Not Here

by SeireiLeafy



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brotherly Love, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Sad, seriously i hate myself for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29480292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeireiLeafy/pseuds/SeireiLeafy
Summary: He’d say the mighty had fallen, but he never had anything to fall from.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Kudos: 15





	Weaving Spiders Come Not Here

“Loki.”

Loki dare not look to the voice coming from the hall next to his isolated cell. Through the glass-like wall, he could imagine what he would see. Blond and tall, decked in royal garb fit for the king he had become. Loki wasn’t sure what he dreaded most, the idea of seeing his brother for the first time in what felt like eons or looking and finding nothing but his cruel imaginations idea of a joke. An empty room as it had been all this time, voice coming from air.

“Loki, the guards have told me you have not been eating.”

Instead of looking towards the voice, insisting on his attention, Loki fixed his gaze on the corner of the room. There, where wall met wall met ceiling, a web. Spiders.

If Loki were younger, if Loki were hopeful, _if Loki weren’t Loki_ , maybe he would have put names to the spiders. Given power to them over his domain, small as it was, by assigning words to their existence.

Maybe not.

Loki closed his eyes, when he opened them, nothing had changed.

Nothing ever changes here. Even the spiders.

“Do you ever wish, brother, that we didn’t live quite so long?”

There was a silence from beside him, for a moment Loki thought that was it. He hadn’t heard footsteps, imagination it was, then. But, of course, as with everything else in his life until now, he had been wrong.

“Please, Loki, look at me.”

Loki almost did. It sounded _so_ like his brother.

When they were younger, Loki had idolised the Thunderer. Along with everyone else in Asgard, he had put Thor on a pedestal, even as he longed to climb the stone and stand beside him.

Not above him. Just beside. An equal. But now, what is less equal than a prisoner to a king? He’d say the mighty had fallen, but he never had anything to fall from.

It took everything in Loki to not turn his head now.

“How can I be sure that you’ll be there?”

Loki had been fooled enough times already by his diminishing mind, and though it had yet to torture him with the thing he refused to admit to himself he wanted the most, that didn’t mean it hadn’t finally conquered his remaining will to push it away.

He hoped his brother was there. He really, truly did.

“You’ve been hallucinating?”

There was a rustle of clothes, as if Thor were shifting on the spot. Real life, or his mind paying attention to details?

Instead of answering, Loki tilted his head, jutting his chin in the direction of his cellmates, up there in the corner.

“The spiders, in the corner, are they really there?”

On second thought.

“Don’t tell me. I’m not sure what I would do if they weren’t.”

There was silence, once again. Loki had fought against the silence so hard when he had first come here. Screaming his indignance down the halls to no one, glorious speeches to anyone who would and could be listening. At the very least, he figured once in a while Heimdall would turn his eye to him, and for just a moment, another person would hear what he had to say.

Eventually, Loki’s pride wore down. Even for someone like him, who loathed crowds and valued his privacy below little else, the loneliness had become crushing all too quickly. Talking to himself had proved helpful for a short time, but even he grew tired of his voice, after running it ragged and cracked through hours of indulgence. The silence always returned, even his own voice couldn’t fight it long.

“How long has it been? Food comes, though I’m not sure from where, or with what regularity.”

Typically, he would fall to sleep, and sometimes when he woke up; there would be food. Or, rather, what was considered food down in the Asgardian dungeons. Gruel, mostly, a soft and bland porridge like concoction that made Loki’s taste buds shrivel. No princely banquets in the pits, Loki supposes. It matters not to him, he stopped thinking about the food he was slowly being fed, shrivelling up like his taste buds from the small portions and infrequency. What did it matter if he stopped eating, when there was so little to eat to begin with?

“Ten years.”

A mere drop in the ocean, then, compared to his many years left. Though, not if he had any say in it. His mind drifted back to the food he was avoiding. His stomach may have growled at the thought, but it just made him less inclined to eat.

“A mere three thousand and change to go, if I truly am to live out my lifes sentence.”

What errant god decided that it be his fate to suffer this for the next three thousand miserable sunrises he’ll never get to see again? Loki knew not who created the Asgardians, but it surely seemed like a cosmic joke that they be given such long lives to squander.

Loki supposes the errant god to blame for his own misfortune might just be himself.

“Please, just look at me.”

That voice. That pleading, warm, hurt, brotherly voice. It used to make him sick to his stomach. Now, he just feels the cavity in his chest where he’s told his heart should be twist in guilt. No end of pain he’s caused, no end to his pain there will be.

“I don’t want you to not be there.”

This, Loki thinks, is the most he’s spoken in years.

“Like the spiders.”

Suddenly, as if he were suddenly back in Jotuunheim, the room grew colder. It must be winter in Asgard. He felt a shift in the room beside him, heard an almost silent but clear sound as the forcefield that formed the front wall of his cell dissipated. If he were still the sorcerer he had once been, he imagines he would have been able to feel the prickle as the magic vanished.

Then, warmth emanating from close to his person, warmth he could never hope to produce himself, cold blooded and alien as he was. He knew Thor was beside him now. Loki still not dare look.

Then, as real as it could be, a calloused but warm and gentle hand was pressing into his cheek, turning his head, and he hadn’t the energy to fight it.

And there was Thor. In all his regal glory. His hair was shorter than last Loki saw him, but his face no more weathered. He looked exactly the same as he had ten years ago at the sentencing hearing that doomed Loki to his cage, sad eyes and all. Loki wonders if he himself has changed at all? They would hardly trust him with a mirror in here.

“I am here, brother.”

Loki closes his eyes against the gentle touch. How long had it been since he had been touched by another being? A decade in the very least. And how long, then, had he been touched without malice? Without a whisper of intent to do harm.

The last time hands had been laid on him was the evening he was led to the cell, the grip on the tops of his arms bruising and the shackles round his ankles and wrists chaffing against soft skin. They weren’t allowed to harm him then, but they had cause to. They had reason to. So far, he had been spared the torture usually plaguing the halls and cells of the dungeons. But now, he would prefer the cold brutality of the guard’s self-righteous tyranny than that of the solitude he had been kept in for far too long already, to say nothing of the millennia ahead of him.

But the hand on his cheek was unmistakeably kind, and Loki found himself leaning into the touch that not so long ago would have sent unjustified disgusted shivers down his spine, sparked underserved anger in his stomach and made his heart clench in misplaced jealousy.

Ah yes, the ten years in the dungeon had taught him well enough already. He had sincere regrets and apologies to spare to anyone who felt themselves entitled to them. He would run his mouth dry, speak until his silver tongue fell out expressing his contrition to the innumerable lives he had touched, for better or, more likely, for worse, across the nine realms. That, he thinks, would be a better use of his remaining four thousand years of life than wasting away in this prison of his own making. Forgotten by all those he wronged, if not already by now then surely soon enough.

But he doesn’t apologize to the man kneeling beside him. Or not kneeling beside him. Loki isn’t sure it matters much anymore. Instead, he speaks the truth.

“I miss you, Thor. I haven’t seen another being in far too long.”

Opening his eyes, the man was still before him. Eyes soft but grave, as if he knew that Loki was not long for this world, as if this was his final goodbye. Loki was never a fan of goodbyes, too many of them he had been forced to suffer through. Although now, there was little Loki wouldn’t do to hear just one more if it meant company for just a few more moments. Thor spoke, and Loki can’t tell if the words reach his ears from outside or inside his own mind.

“What of the spiders?”

Loki turns his head away from his brother. It felt foolish that once upon a time, Loki would prickle at the familial term. What did it matter now? Why did it matter then?

The hand on his cheek moved with his head, the man beside him shifting in his peripheral, but he felt no movement in the air around him. A good sign or a bad one, Loki didn’t know. Wasn’t sure it could even be considered a sign at all, at this point. Not everything had a point.

Loki’s eyes fell on the corner of the room where the spiders had built their home. He can’t remember when they joined him in his isolation. As if one day it was just an ordinary corner, and the next it held his only friends in the world.

It was a new day today, it seemed. The corner was empty, no remnants of silk remaining, not a cobweb to be seen. No evidence it had been anything other than just another junction of empty wall. Loki vaguely wished he had the ability to be surprised, as if it would make the realisation more palatable. But instead, he just felt empty, like the corner. Perhaps the spiders would make home inside him next. Though, Loki supposed, they had already done that.

The hand on his cheek is cool now. Not cold, nor biting. Not a temperature that could mean anything to anyone. Uncharacteristic of Thor, usually burning so brightly, Loki thinks he should feel like the sun pressed to his skin.

“What spiders, brother?”

Turning his head back towards the empty space beside him, Loki wondered vaguely what the Thor of his mind knew that he didn’t. Though, perhaps if his mind didn’t want him to know, he shouldn’t push too hard.

He returned his gaze back to the corner. In another hundred years, maybe.

If the spiders come back, maybe Thor will too.

Maybe, next time, the spiders will be real.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sad.


End file.
